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F.A.A. to Let Stranded Aircraft Take to Air

The Federal Aviation Administration announced plans yesterday to let general aviation aircraft, like business jets and helicopters, escape from 204 airports, heliports and other sites near New York and Washington where they have largely been grounded since Sept. 11.

In the three weeks since the terrorist attacks, the F.A.A. has opened brief windows when aircraft could leave airports within 25 miles of New York and Washington, but the new plan is the first effort at clearing the locations en masse.

Aircraft owners will be allowed to fly private planes out of the affected airports during certain hours over five days beginning Friday.

The airports include La Guardia, Kennedy and Newark in the New York area and Dulles, Baltimore-Washington and Ronald Reagan National in the Washington area.

William Shumann, an F.A.A. spokesman, said he did not know how many aircraft were stranded at the various sites or how many would be moved beginning Friday. But Jack Olcott, president of the National Business Aviation Association, which represents corporate aviation users, said the grounding ''has been more than an inconvenience.''

It has all but halted traffic at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, a major site for general aviation, where only charter flights have been allowed. Business has evaporated at Jet Aviation, the airport's primary maintenance and catering site for corporate jets, which would normally service 150 planes a day.

The company is losing $200,000 a week in revenue, said Bruce McNeely, senior vice president for aircraft management.

Mr. McNeely estimated that only eight or nine corporate jets were still at the airport, some of which would normally be based there. Many companies instead have diverted their planes to airports in Morristown, N.J.; White Plains and Islip, N.Y., requiring much longer commutes.

Discussions continued yesterday, meanwhile, on whether to shrink the 25-mile no-fly zones around New York and Washington to 18 miles, which would reopen Teterboro.

The National Business Aviation Association told its members that the move was imminent, but Mr. Shumann said no decision had been made.